


A Little Hope

by RocknVaughn



Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: 3x08, Angst, Canon Compliant, Drama, F/M, canon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 18:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15491784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RocknVaughn/pseuds/RocknVaughn
Summary: Mattie gets the shock of her life, Leo comes to his senses, and Niska is oddly wise (but still terrifying).





	A Little Hope

**Author's Note:**

> This is my take on the Series 3 finale and what I wanted to happen next. For now, I'm posting this as a standalone, however I am hoping to add to this as time goes on. My life is not conducive to story writing at the moment, so I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up. I will add to this as a series if I am able to continue it. Thanks for reading!

~

 

“I don’t want to lose you, Mattie.”

Mattie’s lips twisted into a bittersweet smile. “It’s too late, Leo,” she replied, and continued up the stairs behind the policeman taking her who-knew-where.

“Mattie…” Leo breathed painfully, feeling as if he’d been kicked in the chest. His eyes followed her retreating form until she turned a corner and disappeared from sight. _No,_ his mind rebelled in disbelief. _Not her, too._

In shock, Leo turned and walked back out of the building, cut adrift like a ship in a storm. He looked at Mia’s body, surrounded by a halo of candles, left by people and synths who didn’t even know her, but had been moved by her plight. She had touched so many, but loved so few: Fred, Niska, Max and him. And then Laura, and the rest of the Hawkins family. They alone truly suffered her loss.

His eyes surveyed the crowd, looking for and finding his brother. Next to him was Joe, Toby, and Sophie. With a frown, Leo checked the sea of faces again, but someone was missing; a person who Leo _knew_ would never miss this moment if she had a choice: Laura.

Leo approached Joe, placing a hand on the older man’s arm and gently squeezing to make his presence known. Joe’s eyes softened in sympathy when he saw who was there. “Leo,” he said, placing his hand over Leo’s, “I’m so sorry about Mia. It was absolutely awful, but she was brave, right to the very end.”

“Thank you,” Leo replied with a mournful sigh. “I’m surprised that Laura isn’t here. She and Mia were good friends.”

Joe’s eyes widened momentarily, but then realized, “Oh, you don’t know, do you?” Joe turned and also looked at Max, wanting to include him in what he was about to say. “She went on live TV...told everyone about what the Government was trying to do to you all with that Basswood stuff. They’ve arrested her. Her and that Doctor...Neil something or other.”

“Dr. Neil Sommer?” Max questioned.

“Yeah, I think that was him.”

“He was with the Dryden Commission when they came to the Railyard.”

“He was one of the blokes that designed Basswood,” Joe explained. “But something changed his mind about it, in the end. He gave Laur the evidence she needed to expose their plans.” Joe  looked down at Mia’s inert body. “Not soon enough, though.”

“Perhaps it would always have come down to this,” Max said quietly, “Basswood or not. Mia’s sacrifice has given the rest of us a chance to live.”

“Sacrifice?” Leo asked bitterly, advancing on Max angrily and gesturing toward Mia. “You call _this_ a sacrifice!? It was murder _,_ nothing more.”

Max shook his head and placed a calming hand on Leo’s shoulder. “It was a _choice,_ ” he insisted. “Mia knew what she was doing when she refused to fight. She knew what would likely happen, but she chose the path of peace anyway.”

 

~

 

Mattie was terrified, but she was determined. She was not going to allow her mother to suffer for the truth and her not. After all, she’d brought this terrible present upon everyone. Why should she hide in the shadows? Why should she not stand tall and face the consequences of her own actions?

“I give you the truth and you release my Mum,” she told Lord Dryden, proferring the USB memory stick that held both her confession and the proof to back it up.

Lord Dryden shook his head, dismissing her claim. “I can’t agree to that.”

“Well then, I take it to the press. And it strikes me that you could use a positive spin right about now.”

The man’s face turned speculative and then he reached out to take the memory stick. Mattie yanked it back out of reach.

“My mother walks free today. No negotiations; no clauses. Take it or leave it.” She held her hand out once more.

Just as Lord Dryden removed the USB stick from her fingers, the door to the conference room whispered open, admitting--of all people--Niska. Staring straight at Lord Dryden, she commanded, “You will leave now.”

“How did she get in here?” Lord Dryden exclaimed, walking a step toward Niska. To his synth, he commanded, “Get her out of here.”

But when the synth turned toward Niska, he stopped, blinked, and then walked right past her to confront Lord Dryden. “What are you doing? What the _hell_ are you doing?” he demanded to know as the synth stopped in front of him and then grabbed the man by the wrist, squeezing until he dropped the memory stick and escorting him forcefully out of the room.

Niska walked the length of the boardroom as Mattie approached her from the other side of the table. “How did you do that?” she asked, and then stutter stepped when she took in Niska’s bright purple eyes. “What’s happened to you? What are you doing here?” she breathed.

Niska didn’t answer her query. Instead, she said in an eerily calm voice, “You are important, Mattie. Your _baby_ is important.”

“How…?” Mattie’s mouth gaped like a fish out of water for a stunned moment before she explained defiantly, “I’m not keeping it. I’m going to the clinic. I’m telling everyone about Day Zero. I don’t give a _shit_ what they do to me!”

“You cannot make this decision until you know everything. Your child is unique: half-human, half-synth...a coming together of man and machine. She will change the course of history; a history that can only unfold if you let it, Mattie. Your baby will be the first of a new kind. She is hope. She is everything we’ve been fighting for. She is the future of all of us.”

Mattie stared at Niska in shock, her brain trying and failing to comprehend the gravity of everything she’d just been told. But like a hard drive on reboot, it didn’t take long for Mattie to recover. “What the hell are you on about?” she demanded of this strange, eerie version of Niska. “Leo isn’t a synth. He’s human!”

“He is not,” Niska explained, still patiently calm in a way that Mattie had never seen Leo’s sister before. “When Hester stabbed Leo and damaged his synthetic memory component, it caused synthetic fluid to cross the brain barrier into his bloodstream. Leo was once a cyborg; separate human and machine parts creating a whole. Now, he is a hybrid; a human who has been genetically altered by the bonding of the synthetic fluid to his DNA, changing it, changing _him_ . He has taken on the best synthetic characteristics: his body now runs more efficiently, it is stronger, it heals faster. Yet, he processes emotions better than any synth, and he recharges with sleep rather than electricity. And he has passed on these extraordinary traits on to your child. She will be the first to be born as both synth _and_ human.”

Mattie crossed her arms across her chest stubbornly. “You’re assuming that I’m going to change my mind. I’m sorry, Niska, but not even _you_ are going to bully me into doing something I don’t want to do.”

“Despite your bravado, I know you that even now you are undecided. If Leo hadn’t left; if your mother hadn’t given up her freedom to save us, you would not be here, trying to make this sacrifice.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that, Mattie.”

“Oh yeah?” Mattie challenged. “If you’re so damn smart, then what about the reporter who’s going to tell the world what I did tomorrow, no matter what happens tonight?”

“Audrey Ballard from The Speculator will not be a problem for you.”

“Why? What are you going to do?” Mattie demanded to know. “No matter how much I loathe her right now, that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to go around _Nisk-ing_ her.”

The corner of Niska’s mouth curved up in amusement. “I have no intention of eliminating her, Mattie. There is no need. You have everything you need to change the outcome in your favour.”

“Oh yeah? And what is that?”

“Project Basswood. You have maintained a copy of it somewhere, I assume?”

“Naturally.”

“Then you contact her and propose a trade: She agrees to bury the Day Zero story if you give her exclusive rights to the Project Basswood story.”

Mattie shook her head. “That’s not fair, though. Why should my mother go to prison for telling the truth when what I did was much worse?”

Niska approached Mattie, and her strangely glowing eyes softened with an empathy that Mattie had never seen her express openly before. “Mattie, your mother chose the path she did in order to ensure the survival of our kind. Her unjust imprisonment will continue to shed light on the synthetic rights issue and eventually win our freedom from persecution. You are negating her sacrifice if you do not allow her to complete the mission she has begun.”

Mattie had to admit that Niska had a point.

“Telling the world the truth about Day Zero serves no purpose other than to punish yourself. The public will not understand your choice and why you made it.”

“But Mia…”

“Even with Mia. Humans have been moved by her plight, but she is not seen as an equal by them. It will take years for this country to truly see the ‘humanity’ of conscious synths the way you do.”

Mattie planted her hands on her hips in exasperation. “How do you even _know_ stuff like that?”

“It is a story longer than I have time to explain at the moment, but suffice it to say that I now have access to every digital record, every video camera, every computer, every synthetic mind, and the entire Internet simultaneously. I can calculate trends, compare data sets, and examine a near-infinite amount of facts in milliseconds.”

“You’re seriously scaring me right now,” Mattie said warily.

“More than usual?”

Niska asked the question so drolly that it brought an unexpected snort of laughter to Mattie’s lips. “A bit, yeah.”

“Good.”

“You still don’t get to tell me what to do about the baby, though. No matter how special she may or may not be, what I do about her is _my_ decision, not yours. Mine and Leo’s...no one else.”

“I know.” Niska looked off to the side for a moment as if in thought, and then replied, “Well, you’ll be able to discuss it with him soon, then, since he’s on his way up.”

 

~

 

Despite the vigil taking place in front of him, Leo found his eyes straying upward at the building where Mattie was. Where had she been going anyway? The only thing of interest in this building that would be open at this time of night was the Dryden Commission, but there was no reason for Mattie to go there... _was there?_

Leo frowned, his mind jumping from one thought to another like a child playing hopscotch. Laura. She had exposed the Dryden Commission’s secret project; the one designed to exterminate the green-eyed synths. Then she’d been arrested, presumably for treason. And Mattie...what had she said?

Not that she didn’t want him anymore; not that she didn’t forgive him. Only that it was too late...but too late for _what?_

His mind strayed back to the day Mattie had almost turned herself in. She’d told him what he needed to hear, what she wanted him to believe, in order to lull him into a sense of complacency. And then she’d tried to make a break for it, but he’d cottoned on in the nick of time and stopped her from making a huge mistake.

This time, the stakes were much higher. More pain and suffering. More deaths, and Mattie would feel responsible, especially after what happened to Mia, which, from what Joe had said, they had all watched on live television. The guilt would be eating Mattie alive, and this time, he hadn’t been there to talk her down. And if she thought that turning herself in would free her mother, then...  

“Shit!” Leo cursed under his breath. Joe looked at him strangely, but he didn’t have time to explain; he just bolted, running toward the building at full-speed, praying to whatever higher power might hear him that he wasn’t too late.

As the revolving door spit him into the lobby of the building, the receptionist behind the counter shouted sternly, “You can’t go up there!” But Leo ignored her, taking the steps two at a time, going up and up and up, not knowing where he was going but feeling the inexorable pull of Mattie’s presence somewhere above him.

In his haste, Leo practically spilled into the conference room, panting, “Mattie, don’t!” before coming to a confused stop upon finding Mattie alone.  Her back was to him as she looked pensively upon the London skyline out the window.

“Did Niska send you?” Mattie asked him woodenly, her eyes making contact with his in the reflection of the glass.

“What? Niska?” Leo asked incredulously. “You’ve seen Niska!?”

“She just left,” Mattie explained, turning to face Leo. Her eyes were red-rimmed and wet, but her expression was fierce. “Didn’t you see her?”

“No.”

“Then how did you know where to find me?” she asked, crossing her arms across her front protectively.

“I don’t know,” Leo said. “I just did.” He walked toward her, placing a large hand on each of her shoulders. “Please tell me you didn’t just do what I think you did.”

“I was going to,” Mattie admitted, looking at the floor between their feet. “But Niska stopped me before I could.”

“Thank God!” Leo breathed, leaning in and resting his forehead against Mattie’s. “I should have known; I should have realised that’s what you would do.”

Mattie took a step back, breaking the connection. “It doesn’t mean that I still won’t.”

“Mattie, no…” Leo moved to close the gap, but Mattie’s intense gaze arrested his motion.

“Why did you come back, Leo? Is it just because Mia is gone? That you lost one source of love and affection, so you came looking for the other?”

Leo’s mouth gaped open in gobsmacked horror. “Of course not!”

“Then what was all that downstairs?” Mattie demanded to know. “Especially since you took the first available opportunity to piss off after you found out I was pregnant.”

This time, Leo did step closer, although he didn’t dare reach for her hand. “Look, I’m not proud of how I reacted or what I did. But please, Mattie, hear me out.”

There were several moments of tension-fraught silence before Mattie let out a long sigh and nodded.

“After I woke up, everything was changing so fast: with Max, with you...but with myself the most. And it wasn’t just the physical changes; it was the emotional ones, too. I had no idea how much my synthetic brain had changed the way I felt and dealt with emotions until I was back to being human again. Everything was just so... _much!_ Wonderful, and overwhelming, and outright terrifying at times.”

“Like your feelings were too big,” Mattie murmured.

“Yes,” Leo agreed.

With just a hint of a smile, Mattie explained, “Max told me that once when I asked what it was like to be him.”

Encouraged, Leo reached out and cradled Mattie’s head in his hand, using his thumb to softly caress her cheek. “Since the beginning, you’ve always been there for me. There was this connection between us that I didn’t understand. Despite not trusting humans, I always trusted you. When you saw me going down the wrong path with Hester, you didn’t give up on me. You and Max saved me from myself. And when I woke up from the coma and you were the first person I saw, I felt--” Leo shook his head, at a loss to describe it. “I didn’t know what I felt, really; only that seeing you smile made me warm inside.”

Leo’s thumb ghosted across Mattie’s lower lip. “When Max made us leave the Railyard, I was suddenly in your life, in your house, in your _room_ . I really got a chance to see who you were: what your hopes and dreams were, as well as your fears and insecurities. And all of it just pulled me in, deeper and deeper until I never wanted to be free of it...of _you._ Then you told me you hadn’t been at my bedside because of guilt, and it was like a roman candle had been lit inside of me. Suddenly, I wanted to be so much closer to you. I needed you like I needed air.”

“Leo…” Mattie half-gasped, half-sobbed as her eyes filled with tears.

Leo brushed them away with his thumb. “These past few weeks with you was like living in a dream. It was like nothing and no one could touch us inside our little bubble of happiness.”

He let out a long sigh. “But then the real world intruded in the form of Sam. Nothing against him, because if it hadn’t been him, it would have been something else eventually. But his presence dredged up all kinds of not-so-pleasant memories, which led to the dream about my father and his notebook. Which led me-- _us_ \--back home.”

Leo let go of Mattie and threaded his hands through his hair, tugging at the roots as if the motion would force the words out. “I can’t begin to tell you how surreal it was to be there. To see the house turned into a museum; to know that countless people had walked through those halls, never knowing the sadness and tragedy that permeated the place...I could feel it the second I walked in. Everywhere I looked, there was another memory pushing its way to the surface, forcing me to remember it.”

“And then to find my father’s journal, to read what he’d written, to prove once and for all just how little I mattered to him…”

This time, it was Mattie reaching out to him. “Don’t say that.”

“No, it’s true,” he said. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s _not_ okay, but I’ve made my peace with it. My father didn’t love me, because he didn’t know how to love anyone. But it was that knowledge that was still fresh in my mind when you showed me your test result. Ignoring the fact that I literally had nothing I could offer either of you because officially I died ten years ago, how could I ever give our child the love it deserves when I’d had no one to teach me how to do that?”

At that, Mattie stepped forward, wrapped her arms around Leo’s waist, and hugged him. Leo closed his eyes to savour the feeling as he returned the gesture. He leaned his cheek against the crown of Mattie’s head and continued, “At the time, I honestly thought I was doing the right thing. You had a loving, supportive family to help you and my presence would only put you both in more danger.”

“So, what changed your mind?”

“When I was at the Railyard, Mia showed up there just moments before the government overloaded the power grid. Together, she and I managed to unplug all the synths but one. If she hadn’t come when she did, most of the synths in the compound would have died, including Max and Sam.”

“Oh my God,” Mattie breathed, giving Leo’s torso another squeeze.

“Yeah,” Leo agreed. “When I voiced my surprise at Mia coming back to the Railyard after being set free, she told me that she would always come back for me.” Leo lifted his head and looked down at Mattie, letting her see the unshed tears shimmering in his eyes. “I _have_ had a positive role model for a parent. Mia might have been made in order to care for me, but she didn’t have to love me. She did anyway, even though I was a human. And that was when I realised that I’d made a mistake. Because families stick together. They support each other. They love each other. I knew then that my place was here, with you. With _both_ of you, if you’ll have me,” he amended, trailing the back of his knuckles across Mattie’s still-flat stomach.

Mattie closed her eyes against her own tears. _Damn you for being right, Niska!_ she thought as Leo’s fingers threaded between hers and squeezed softly. Now that Leo was back; now that he wanted her--wanted both of them--in his life, there was no way she could go through with her current plan.


End file.
